Badminton Season – Covid-19 and its impacts to CAS

Covid-19 as a global pandemic is very overwhelming to think about, but since it’s not good to dwell, the best thing to do right now would be to do what I can to the best of my abilities. CAS as I’ve understood it is mainly aimed at ensuring that students undergo a broad selection of experiences in key areas like “creativity, activity, and service”. That being said, although Covid-19 has cut off access to school and thus some of the resources are no longer available to us, through this reflection I want to see what I can still do.

ACTIVITY
This year I have already completed my requirements for physical activities. In season 1, I had done Body Pump as a way for me to improve my overall strength. In season 2, I participated in pre-season badminton, and finally, in Season 3, I participated in U19A Badminton as part of our school team. Thinking back to these moments, all of them played an important role in my physical progression. Body pump was a good reminder to work on strength and since then I have been committed to physical training. Pre-season badminton gave me more time to improve my hand technique and footwork, which although was decent still fell behind many of my peers. The main challenge I had with my footwork is that I am not able to be ‘light on feet’, there are many things I could attribute this to, but if I had to blame it on something, it would be that I  naturally have thicker calves and smaller feet which make it harder. This, however, shouldn’t be something I simply blame my weaknesses on, instead, I needed to consistently challenge myself to improve, and over time I did see some progress in this area.

So how am I still partaking in activities during COVID? Well, although I would like to play sports all of the community sports halls have been closed and that has left me instead to focus only on my physical conditioning. Due to COVID, I have been at home for the last ~1.5 months, which has actually become a good opportunity to continue working on my strength training. Currently, the routine I have directed for myself and committed to is to run or walk regularly, running at least twice a week and going on walks with my family as well, and while that is going on I alternate days of bodyweight workouts and mobility stretches based on Tom Merricks 7-day bodyweight fitness exercises.

A new skill that I have also added into the mix is working on Skip Ropes. Skip ropes or jump ropes are a good way to do some cardio-based exercise while in a fixed area, and I just happened to dig some up in my brother’s cabinet. On the first attempt with them, it took me about 5 minutes for the first hundred. It has now been about 5 sessions later, and the fastest 100 I have performed was at ~1:30 mark which I am quite proud of. But in the end, I still am developing this skill, in fact, some of these sessions have been the most frustrating physical task I’ve done. It’s mainly been because the hardest part about skipping ropes is not whipping yourself across the legs or face, and though my legs do eventually fatigue, its usually my technique that struggles first. On the subject area of struggling, the new physical workouts I have been doing are designed around the fact that strength only improves when you do exercises that are ‘hard’. To this note, I think that I have had to be extra committed to pushing myself as much as I can every session because, without this extra motivation to work hard, the effect of the workout as a whole would diminish. In some ways, by directing my own physical fitness growth through this new routine I have planned out a personal CAS experience.

All of that being said, I think that from activity this year I’ve learned a lot about pushing myself to take on new challenges. These experiences also clarified to me the value of working hard towards a goal, and how by doing so you can incrementally develop yourself to take that step closer towards achieving what you want.

Pike Handstand Skills Video